Recipes for Modernity: The Politics of Food, Development, and Cultural Heritage in the Americas

In the mid-20th century, food had become an important matter in the
international order. The United Nations included the "right to
food" in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and set up
the Food and Agriculture Organization to work toward the goal of
providing sufficient and nutritious food. Yet, food shortages and
food riots across the world are testament to the fact that the
international food order is still beset by steep inequalities.
This project examines food policies in Latin America as a means to
investigate how that region has attempted to make modernization work
for itself. Specifically, I propose to trace the diverse and
shifting food policies in Latin America from the 1920s to the
present. Food emerged in the 1920s as a field of policy across Latin
America, as expanding state machineries engaged in technocratic,
top-down modernization projects. From the beginning, food experts
were tied into transnational professional communities and
international organizations (the FAO, but also the Pan American
Health Organization and Unesco) which analyzed the role of food and
nutrition in the context of public health, education, and culture.
These organizations were sites for the exchange of ideas and
elaboration of international expert discourses and this project will
work out the tensions between developmentalist approaches to food
and the notion that foodways constitute cultural heritage worthy of
protection.
Case studies at the national level will examine how these expert
discourses were articulated in specific historical contexts, where
market forces, mass media as well as political expedience shaped
food policy and consumption. At the unexplored intersection of
international history, Latin American history, and the history of
food, this project will delineate the rise of technocratic,
neo-liberal modernity and the constrained consumerist possibilities
it offered to elaborate a more profound understanding of shifting
food policies and consumption in Latin America.

keywords

Latin American development, history of food and nutrition

partner

type

fundamental research project

status

ongoing

start of project

2010

end of project

2013

additional informations

topics

History of food and nutrition, Latin American development,
international organizations, NGOs